Big is a relative term. A Catalina isn't a Sunderland or DoX. If the Sunderland is a battleship, the PBY is a destroyer, the Goose a minesweeper and the Widgeon a PT boat.A big flying boat can take I believe up to 2 miles to get off the water, more if it doesn't have the wind to fly into.
A PBY rigged up for photogrammetry and magnetic mapping used to stop in occasionally at our local airport and suck our 100 octane tanks dry. That thing could stay up for twelve hours at a time, flying endless grid patterns photo mapping or trailing a magnetometer "bomb" on a long cable. (Borring!)
Once it had a landing gear actuator failure and landed on a nearby lake, so we drove our fuel truck over and put 500 gallons in it. The lake is about 3/4 mile long with hills at both ends, but the Cat had no trouble getting out, except for getting fined $10K for landing on a drinking water reservoir. Expensive tank of gas.
PBYs used snatch downed pilots out of lagoons and off coral reefs in WWII, often under fire.
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